Yahoo, Flickr can go to hell!

Published

I’ve recently open a blog about shoes with 8 (woman) friends of mine, called shoesisterhood.com. Mainly about woman shoes.

Well, our editors went to some parties and in order to select which pictures to post on the blog they created an free flickr account to post those pictures. Well, first the account was placed as “Unsafe” content. Most of the content is in this post.

Last week was Lisbon’s Vogue Fashion Night Out the girls decided to do a contest about who was wearing the best shoes and upload those into flickr as well. Today I’ve noticed that the content was still flagged as unsafe. Most pictures are a bit sexy, but not risqué, are mostly woman on high heels. So I appealed to flickr so explaining that most of the pictures are about shoes and are not sexual in any way.

Well, half an hour ago I’ve received an email explaining me that Voyeur content was not allowed on flickr:

Hello, Voyeur content is a violation of the Flickr Community Guidelines and Yahoo! Terms of Service. You can also read the following help forum discussion about voyeur content on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/ Specifically this comment from staff: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/#reply625343 -Flickr staff

Voyeur??? What the …!!?? So I’ve read the post in question and it that the following is their definition of Voyeur is says:

… practice of secretly photographing women (and men, and children) and posting them to Flickr for the purposes of sexual gratification…

So it seems that their problem is with pictures being taken without the explicit consent for sexual purposes? Ok, I reply to this email explaining once again that the people in the photographs were asked for permission before a picture being taken. The account is related to a blog about shoes, and no one in those pictures are being victims of sexual exploitation. I can’t understand the connection.

After sending the email I’ve decided to check the account to see if everything is ok. To my amazement, the account was deleted. Not only that, after logging in, I wasn’t given a choice to download the pictures. That means, my friends, that maybe some pictures were lost because of this. I don’t know what kind of show flickr is running but after the founders left the company I don’t know who ever is left there has the users interests in mind. The site is stagnant for years! And This was an free account but I do have an paid account. After Carol Bartz being fired, the board being considered the worst in the US, and hearing about people loosing entire collections, I’m done with flickr. I’m gonna wait until my subscription is over and I’m gonna move my stuff to other services. I don’t know if picasa is any good, or if I have to write a photo management service from the ground up, but one thing is for sure, in one year I’m not going to be using flickr. Something is roten at yahoo and I have a feeling that flickr might die with them.